miniaturehoarder
First Post
-5 / +5 to hit sounds fair as long as one can hit on something other than a natural 20.
D&D 5E Aimed Shots
I've been handling this sort of thing via a simple wager system. In this case I'd say:
"To aim for a weak spot, roll Wisdom (Perception) versus DC 15. On a success, you get to attack and roll one additional damage die. On a failure, you waste your action trying to aim and can't attack."
It introduces an extra roll, which slows things down, but is super broadly applicable to a wide variety of crazy rule-breaking stunts my players attempt.
"To aim for a weak spot, roll Wisdom (Perception) versus DC 15. On a success, you get to attack and roll one additional damage die. On a failure, you waste your action trying to aim and can't attack."
It introduces an extra roll, which slows things down, but is super broadly applicable to a wide variety of crazy rule-breaking stunts my players attempt.
There was a thread recently about critical hits and fumbles for 5th Edition, with many new ideas from different posters that could be useful to you.
Arctic Wolf
First Post
Thank you all for the responses and sorry it took so long to respond. School and work getting in the way heh. There were some great points in here and I will take a look at all of them before going along with one, and after I take a look at thread about criticals and fumbles.
Hriston
Dungeon Master of Middle-earth
Useful thread! I especially want to check out Mearls's book. You might also want to take a look at the rules for hit locations that Dave Arneson wrote for Supplement II, Blackmoor. These are for melee only mind you, which is what your original post seemed to be asking about, and to summarize, they basically cross reference the height and weapon length of the attacker with the height of the defender to give the probability of making a hit in an area that may do lethal damage (head, chest, etc.). It assumes that a head shot is the most desirable, and so falls in line with what many said up-thread about the default system representing an attempt at making the most lethal attack possible. The advantage that Arneson's system gives you if you hit in the head or chest (or, if non-humanoid, some other area containing vital organs) the damage done is allocated to that specific area. Damage to the head of a humanoid, for example, would only need to be 15% of the creature's total hit points to kill. These rules could probably be simplified and adapted to 5e without too much work, using creature sizes instead of height in feet for example. Hope this is of interest.
Herr der Qual
First Post
The "called shot" a favorite among a lot of players I am familiar with a rule set for it but it's from a very mechanically broken game, actually their called shot rules are one of the only things that isn't totally broken. The rules are from Rifts/Palladium RPG, so when performing attacks (particularly ranged) you can do one of three things attack (just hit the darn thing), aimed attack (taking time to really get your shot in) and called shot (I want to hit X spot for Y effect). Rifts has a weird combat system where a melee round is 15 seconds and a first level character can perform 4-5 actions in that 15 seconds. So keep that in mind when I discuss the rules.
Aimed Shot: +2 bonus at the cost of two attacks.
Called Shot: - 1 to -5 depending on the size of the target another -1 to -5 for movement (sprinting, riding away, harder to hit) and another -1 to -5 for being obscured in any way (including armor). So there exists the near impossible shot of trying to hit an eye of an enemy sprinting through the trees for example.
How I propose to translate this:
1. Aimed shot: Gain Advantage on a ranged/melee attack by sacrificing your move action and any bonus actions available to you.
2. Called shot:
(a) -1 to -5 depending on the difficulty of the target, e.g. a rope 10' away with a bow -1, stabbing an enemy in the eye with a dagger when he is wearing a helmet -3, shooting an enemy in the eye from more than 15' -5.
(b) target is moving or in melee with another person: impose disadvantage, e.g. a fleeing thief that your player wants to stop but not kill aims for knee, while the mini may be stationary on the board he is still running away, therefore moving.
(c) obscurred, if the first two conditions are true, impose a third roll on disadvantage, must take lowest of the three.
Please Note:
This is just my thoughts on how to port it from a system I am also familiar with, you can always just restrict it to non-threatening things like trick shots to hit a rope to drop a gate, etc. If you allow this rule, I would encourage you to warn your characters that if they can do it, so can their enemies, and allow intelligent foes to make called/aimed shots at their own discretion. This also gives you a buffer, if a character starts doing this too often, give him a taste of his own medicine.
If you would like me to create a quick table for damage results for different body parts, please just let me know, I would be happy to do that.
Aimed Shot: +2 bonus at the cost of two attacks.
Called Shot: - 1 to -5 depending on the size of the target another -1 to -5 for movement (sprinting, riding away, harder to hit) and another -1 to -5 for being obscured in any way (including armor). So there exists the near impossible shot of trying to hit an eye of an enemy sprinting through the trees for example.
How I propose to translate this:
1. Aimed shot: Gain Advantage on a ranged/melee attack by sacrificing your move action and any bonus actions available to you.
2. Called shot:
(a) -1 to -5 depending on the difficulty of the target, e.g. a rope 10' away with a bow -1, stabbing an enemy in the eye with a dagger when he is wearing a helmet -3, shooting an enemy in the eye from more than 15' -5.
(b) target is moving or in melee with another person: impose disadvantage, e.g. a fleeing thief that your player wants to stop but not kill aims for knee, while the mini may be stationary on the board he is still running away, therefore moving.
(c) obscurred, if the first two conditions are true, impose a third roll on disadvantage, must take lowest of the three.
Please Note:
This is just my thoughts on how to port it from a system I am also familiar with, you can always just restrict it to non-threatening things like trick shots to hit a rope to drop a gate, etc. If you allow this rule, I would encourage you to warn your characters that if they can do it, so can their enemies, and allow intelligent foes to make called/aimed shots at their own discretion. This also gives you a buffer, if a character starts doing this too often, give him a taste of his own medicine.
If you would like me to create a quick table for damage results for different body parts, please just let me know, I would be happy to do that.
Tommy Brownell
First Post
I disagree, if you rule that they can only try the Called Shot if they don't already have Disadvantage.
I wouldn't do the penalty/damage trade off because of Feats, but Disadvantage to hit an unarmored spot is something I would allow. They figure out their foe has an AC of 18, he's not covered head to toe in armor, they take Disadvantage to hit a lower AC. We use Hero Points, and I would let Inspiration cancel Disadvantage there as well, so it is certainly a viable option in our game.
I think this option is going on the table next week when we start The Rise of Tiamat.
LostSoul
Adventurer
I use a system that only uses Called Shots - players need to describe their attacks or the system won't work - kind of like how you need to say which monster/NPC you attack, and with what weapon, in 5E or else the system won't work. It could probably be ported over to 5E easily, except that damage is based on the description of the attack instead of the weapon. (Spells have more-or-less fixed damage as you'd expect; it'd be too hard otherwise.)
firstkyne
Explorer
Up-thread, someone said 'if there is already a disadvantage in effect, the shot is too tricky, you can't do it'. Which is brilliantly simple. And should probably apply to all sorts of things in addition to attack rolls.
aco175
Legend
I would tend to use the Aimed Shot rule mentioned that grants advantage. Although I'm not sure if everyone can use it like in the UA or only rogues like in Tashas'? And, I would tell them to roll a 20. The PC now has 2 chances to crit and I would allow normal damage, not crit damage, and allow for another side effect like blind or slow or pinned or such. Might be easier to just try and kill them. Likely why not many players in my game try this.
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